New to EASY, have questions about naps

My baby will be 4 months old next week and we just started EASY and the 4 S routine this past Saturday (so we are on day 4). She sleeps great through the night - in bed between 7 and 7:30, wakes up around 5:00 am to eat and then back to sleep again until at least 7:00 am. I work from home so I don't get her up at a set time each morning; I let her sleep until she wakes up on her own which is anywhere between 7:00 and 8:00. If she wakes up any other time during the night, then she will put herself back to sleep with no interference from us.

Our problem is with naps. I don't know when it started, but for at least the last 2 months or so, she has been a catnapper. She will only nap for between 25 and 40 minutes; every once in a while we will get a 50-60 minute nap but it is very, very rare. We did make the mistake of letting her fall asleep on someone when she was younger, or she would fall asleep breastfeeding and I kind of let that become a crutch for her; if nothing else worked, then I would feed her. I knew it wasn't right and I noticed last week that it wasn't working anymore either so I went searching online for help. That's when I decided to read the Baby Whisperer book. So while it is still a struggle,I'm already getting a little better with knowing her wake times - it seems to be an hour for the 1st nap and then an hour and a half for the rest of the day. But she only sleeps 25 to 40 minutes and I have a hard time getting her back to sleep. I know she needs more sleep because she is becoming a grouchy little baby!

So here are my questions:

1 - How long do I try to shush-pat her back to sleep when she wakes up early like that? I have been giving up after about 20 minutes or so, which I'm sure is wrong. But she will just cry and scream the whole time so I feel likeI am torturing her - especially since she will sometimes cry/scream for anywhere from 5 to 40 minutes when I'm trying to get her to go to sleep in the first place (which I know will hopefully improve as we continue the routine and I better learn her wake times). Right now, I have her taking 4 to 5 naps a day because she is taking such short naps and I know she needs to get more sleep.

2 - If I do try to get her back to sleep for lets say an hour and she just never does fall back to sleep, then I assume I'm to count that hour as part of her wake time? So if she has laid there and cried for an hour, then am I to feed her and let her have a few minutes of activity time and then put her back down for the next nap? Because if I wait until the next 'nap time' then she will have actually been awake too long. Right?

Any help and advice you guys can give me would be so great!! Thanks in advance!

I know how you feel! My daughter, now almost 8 months, has been a notorious catnapper. In fact, I could set my clock to 40 min and give or take a few seconds I'd hear her starting to wake up. I had her taking 4 naps a day also, because she slept for such short periods. I tried to put her back to sleep with shush/pat for about 1.5 weeks, for each nap, and this generally worked but it was really stressing me out, it took soooo much time and I felt we weren't getting anywhere.
I don't really have advice for you, just wanted to let you know that she now usually doesn't have a lot of trouble falling asleep because I catch her as soon as she gives me tired signs and we do the same sleep routine always (wind down period like read a short book, walk around the house calmly, then go to her dark room and put on her sleep sack and say good night). So just keep at it, create a routine and eventually she will learn this is sleep time. As for the length just in the last month or two has my daughter started to extend one of her naps, sometimes two, so we are down to 3 naps a day. After all that shush/pat I let her be and resigned myself to short naps until she figured out how to extend them herself.
Hope that helps, at least in knowing you're not alone!